Marni Reti may have finished her UTS Master of Architecture just a few short months ago, but she’s already making her mark on the profession.
A proud Palawa and Ngāti Wai woman, Marni is one of just a handful of Indigenous architecture graduates working in Australia today. As a result, her work brings an important perspective to this often-Eurocentric field – and she’s also using her voice and considerable talents to raise the profile of Australia’s rich Indigenous architectural traditions. This perspective and knowledge led to Marni being named the Emerging Sustainable Architect/Designer at the 2022 Sustainability Awards.
“I see architecture that’s ingrained in Country and cultural knowledge being really specific to Australia,” she says.
“It’s unique and we should be celebrating this culture that all Australians should be proud of.”
Marni is based at Kaunitz Yeung Architecture, a Sydney-based firm known for delivering architecture projects with and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. These include the Punmu and Parnngurr Aboriginal Health Clinics in the Western Australian, the walu-win wellbeing centre in Orange, and the award-winning PAMS Healthcare Hub in Newman, WA.
“That’s the first project I’ve ever worked on from inception through to completion. It’s an incredible piece of architecture,” she says of the PAMS project.
“All of the material in the building is made from rammed earth, the majority of which is from the site itself. The building is made out of Country.”
Marni’s journey into the architecture profession started at UTS in 2015 when she enrolled in a Bachelor of Architecture. During her Master of Architecture in 2019, she was named one of the inaugural recipients of the UTS Droga Indigenous Architecture Scholarship, Australia’s most prestigious funding scheme. The scholarship was established in collaboration with the Droga family to increase the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander architecture graduates in the profession.
For Marni, receiving the scholarship was evidence of UTS’s belief in her talents, as well as proof of the University’s commitment to recognising and promoting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander excellence.
It was really a symbolic thing for me to know that UTS and then, people like the Droga family cared about this issue and were willing to invest in students like me
It just showed that UTS cared about this issue of representation that I felt like I’d been yelling about into a void for three years.
In response, Marni has been actively involved in supporting the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building to expand its Indigenous curriculum. In early 2021, in partnership with her employer, David Kaunitz, she led a Master of Architecture studio subject to the small town of Wilcannia in Western NSW.
Here, she and David taught students to work in consultation with the local Baarkindji community, developing architectural solutions to a range of community challenges.
“We taught the studio as if it were an actual project [in terms of] teaching consultation, how to communicate with communities, how to engage with deep listening, cultural competency, and then most importantly, translating that into a physical architectural proposal,” she says.
It’s important work, preparing future architects to work effectively with and for Indigenous communities and connecting their professional practice to Australia’s rich architectural history.
And for Marni, it’s just the beginning: she’s working on supporting the development of a high-school outreach program to get Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids – especially girls – thinking about an architectural career. She’s also planning to continue her sessional teaching at UTS as a way of staying connected to academia and disseminating her knowledge to current and future students.
And then, of course, there’s her own architectural career. After finalising her registration later this year, she’ll be throwing herself into new and exciting projects at Kaunitz Yeung Architecture. Her ultimate goal? To lead Indigenous architecture projects in both Australia and New Zealand and eventually enrol in a PhD.
